A Teachers' Day Post

To all my former teachers, to my friends from college who eventually went on to pursue this career, to my co-teachers, to my relatives who are also teachers,  and to all the teachers everywhere, happy teachers' day :)

Back in college, people would get surprised when I tell them that I'm taking up Education. And I secretly felt a little happy about the shocked expression on their faces. Why? Because I was able to break a stereotype. That not all teachers are old and boring. That not all teachers are horrible, strict, and uptight. I was able to win a tiny battle for teachers all over the world. One notion proved wrong, one mind became enlightened.

When I was working for a BPO company, people would always ask me why I wanted to be a teacher. There's no money in teaching. Teachers become matandang dalaga. Teachers have zero social life. I would just smile and say, "Teachers are almost never unemployed. What about you?". Again, another small victory for me. Yes, it's true. There's never a teacher millionaire. Or a teacher CEO. And yes, there are many teachers who end up old maids, probably because they really don't have much of a wild social life. But why is that? Because teachers are dedicated. No matter how many times they have thrown the towel and waved the white flag, they never seem to just quit. We can't just go AWOL. Even resigning is hard to do.

Now that I have been a teacher for three years (accomplishment!), I realized that there must be some truth to  those stereotypes. Maybe because teachers are simple human beings. We don't crave for fancy things everyday. Fashion is sacrificed for the sake of comfort (If you have seen our uniforms, you would understand). We get sweaty, tired, haggard-looking, and yet we are the happy. We share our triumphs, our inis, our stress, our kapalpakan. We celebrate small things. A student with dyslexia finished her spelling words. Nobody cried in class today. The students were quiet during the test. That one girl who never eats finally ate pizza. The shy one now has a buddy to eat lunch with. And the bully finally learned to make at least one friend. 

Once someone asked me, "Do you think you are in the right profession?". Before I answered, I asked myself, "Where would I be if I'm not a teacher?". But I couldn't come up with an answer. It's not that my head went blank. I just couldn't decide. That's when I realized that I may just be on the right track simply because I'm not looking for anything else. Then I smiled at her, and said yes.